Whoops. That's exactly what Republicans were saying when the FBI and newspaper investigators were closing in on President Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon for covering up the Watergate break-in by his operatives. Republican defenders of Nixon described it as merely a third-rate burglary and said investigating it would be a waste of time because nothing illegal or untoward happened.

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There is literally nothing the Left won't excuse in their politicians. Even if we held an investigation that proved that President Obama set Amb. Stevens up to be killed, the Left would still defend him.

My sole consolation is that history usually gets it right, and we'll eventually know the truth, as will future generations.

Pro-choice neo-con woman here: There was a time when the country was led by mostly men, mostly white, and if an operation was botched, administrators did their best to openly review what happened, what went wrong, and how to avoid having this happening again. I worked for good men like that, and they were honorable, generous, tough and fair with one and all.

But that's back when mostly white men were in charge. Now it's all these self-important, fussybutt women, and their castrati male codependents, like Obama.

Surely, we are reaching some sort of apex in the long stretch of letting the sissies be in charge. I am long weary of this government of cunts, and it just keeps going!

It may and is probably for other reasons; but, at least one reason for a functional society is homogeneity. The leaders of yesterday could not effectively leverage skin color, or gender, or class, or any other differential to gain leverage over their competing interests. This necessarily limited corruption as everyone competed as individuals and on merit. The presence of empowered competing interests kept honest people honest and others from running amuck.

Of course, the presiding philosophy, principally Christian, was also integral to the order. The most likely outcome follows from a minimum differential between the starting and ending state. The observation that you made is evidence that the philosophy of America's founders was superior, which even led to the eventual rejection of involuntary exploitation and selective liberty. A feat which has yet to be matched throughout the world -- recognition of individual dignity.

As it is for men, it is also for women, they need to recognize individual dignity and the intrinsic value of human life. From those two axiomatic principles, and with consideration for the limitations and requirements imposed by the natural order, we have a hope to realize positive progress.

It'll be revealed to be about an administration that is so incompetent in day to day operations that they can't find their butt cheeks with both hands and a GPS system.

Young Hegelian-I agree. The fact that nobody will provide a timeline of what Obama did and said that very night, and what orders he gave, indicates to me he simply didn't do anything.My money is on him telling Clapper and Panetta to keep an eye on it, and give him updates as needed.

In Watergate, Nixon had no knowledge ahead of time what people like Liddy were up to. What they were up to amounted to fairly minor crimes. Then Nixon broke his oath of office by attempting to cover up these crimes.

In Bengazi, there was incompetance prior to the attack, during the attack and afterwards. This was followed by an ongoing coverup.

The main difference seems to be that one was covering up minor crimes by low-level people and the other is covering up incompetance by people at the highest levels.

Who's making a "moral equivalency?" I'm merely providing background on Watergate. Your scare quotes around the word "journalism" do not serve to undo the fact of Robert Parry's long career in journalism. This does not mean his word or his reporting is inviolable, of course. But neither does your punctuational sneering suffice to refute it.

I'm amazed, when I think on it, how effective it is to criticize not the substance of an argument but the character of the source. It's been, what, 2,500 years since someone wrote down why that tactic is invalid? It's still the most common thing in polemics.

The crime of Benghazi is that Obama created the environment that allowed jihadists to flourish by engaging in regime change. Then his vaunted State Dept. places our ambassador in that environment with outsourced security.

The fact that liberals ignored his adventurist foreign policy just goes to show the partisan hypocrisy that infects the political landscape not to mention the ignorance of the electorate who think we need another four years of this buffoon.

I read All the President's Men a couple of months ago. I was struck by how incompetent everybody was. For instance, writing checks for criminal acts. Even the break-in was stupid. There was no campaign strategy being done at the Watergate. One comment from the book was that the break-in was done by people who had no idea what they were doing. It was very disorganized. Nixon gave his "dirty tricks" crew a lot of freedom, and they went overboard, and then it was drip, drip, drip in the media.

Watergate was, first and foremost, about the power of the media, and how they can shape the narrative. We see this today with the Obama scandals, and how they are brushed aside as nothing. It's really kind of astounding how much power the media has to shape our world.

"Sen. John McCain today issued a statement essentially conceding that he was wrong in accusing the White House of changing U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s talking points on Benghazi for political purposes."

The implication is that in many ways, the press possesses greater authority than the people to whom authority has been granted. The power to realize a preferred outcome through the manipulation of perception should not be underestimated. The other insight gained is that freedom of the press cannot be unsupervised and must necessarily be limited.

Incidentally, it is the lack of competing interests which condemns regimes directed through monopolies or monopolistic practices. That is why communist, socialist, fascist, etc. regimes are destined to fail by design. The ability of the ruled to hold authority accountable is intentionally limited, whereby nothing short of an armed revolution is capable of correcting the inevitable progressive corruption.

This was also the problem faced by other centralized organizations, including organized religions. However, where some people learned from their mistakes, others have failed and continue to sponsor corruption of individuals, institutions, and nations. All for the sake of advancing their own political, economic, and social standing.

This is a brilliant article, comparing the Benghazi scandal with the Valerie Plame horseshit. Hollywood made a movie about that! And yet the Valerie Plame "scandal" was a joke. She was not in the field, she was never in danger, her name was accidentally revealed by Richard Armitage. The whole thing was ridiculous.

This scandal is--obviously--far worse. Innocent people died, including a U.S. ambassador. It stinks of lies and cover-up.

The special prosecutor appointed in the Bush Administration is the precedent for appointing one here.

It would be quite notable if they don't appoint one. And failure to do so would harm any future attempt by the Senate to appoint special prosecutors in a Republican administration. If the Democrats protect Obama here, and continue to pretend like this is a non-scandal, it will lower the ethical bar for conduct in all future administrations. You won't be able to get Republicans to vote for a special prosecutor against a Republican President.

Just waiting for Obama to give a peace sign and proclaim, "I am not a crook!"On a more serious note, Nixon was pushed from the White House when most Republicans lost faith in him and the GOP leadership gave him the shove. Does anyone really think that the Democrats care about Benghazi, or that they would be willing to push Obama out of office? It seems that they are totally convinced that the ends justifies any means, so I do not see any justice being done on this issue while Obama is still in the White House.